FUORISALONE 2014: TOGETHER. THE NEW COMMUNITIES IN AFRICA

Noero Architects, Wolff Architects, ASA studio, NLÉ
organised by Luca Molinari

VERNISSAGE: Monday 7th April 2014 | from 6:30 pm | Free Entrance

EXIHIBITION 7-13 April: from 10.00 a.m. to 8.00 p.m.
14-28 April: Tuesday-Wednesday 3.00 -6.00 p.m.
Upon appointment by writing to paolo@floornature.com
Free Entrance

To mark the occasion the Fuorisalone event, FMG Fabbrica Marmi e Graniti and Iris Ceramica present TOGETHER. THE NEW COMMUNITIES IN AFRICA – Noero Architects, Wolff Architects, ASA studio and NLÉ an exhibition organised by Luca Molinari.

The exhibition which will be held at the SpazioFMGperl’Architettura from 8 to 28 April, in the year Cape Town has been named the World Design Capital, will bring, for the first time to Italy, the vision of four of the best African architect’s firms using the most contemporary language of all: video.

An event that sets out to be a consideration on the ethical and sustainable evolution of the urban scenario. Noero Architects, Wolff Architects, ASA studio and NLÉ are four different organisations in terms of project types and design, yet they share the same human, civil and professional commitment that can be a turning point in the sustainable development of local and global “urban communities”.

“It will be from developing countries and from their experience of a swift urbanisation and globalisation process that Western countries will find an answer to the pressing need for a socially-responsible and environmentally-friendly management of urban territories. Africa, whose architecture is still not widely known to many, today expresses its excellence in the sector of research and project-planning. The TOGETHER. THE NEW COMMUNITIES IN AFRICA event wants to highlight a reality in which the urban project, lived and experienced via a peculiar “sense of community”, leads to valuable insights, innovation and experimentation that can really make the difference and solve the big problems of urbanisation that Western countries are now facing” says Luca Molinari.

The unreleased videos that Noero Architects, Wolff Architects, ASA studio and NLÉ will present at the SpazioFMGperl’Architettura explain and deal with the theme of community as the fundamental element for the considerable urban development that Africa is now experiencing.

Wolff Architects, Heinrich Wolff’s studio, the first South African architect to showcase his design at the Biennale in Venice in 2010, document the life in two schools in Cape Town, the Inkwekwezi Secondary School and the Usasazo Secondary School, focussing on the various uses of a collective space.

NLÉ, founded by Kunlé Adeyemi in 2010 after 10 years of experience gained at Rem Koolhas’s studio, documents a public architecture project dedicated to the its development from building to final use: the Makoko Floating School.

ASA-Active Social Architecture, founded in Kigali in 2012 by young Spanish architect Nerea Amorós Elorduy and Italian Tomà Berlanda, tells about sustainability in a broader sense, applied to a socially “sensitive” contest as Rwanda.

Noero Architects, the established architect’s firm led by Jo Noero, the author of projects showcased at the MOMA museum and at the Biennali exhibitions in Sao Paolo and Singapore, presents the Red Location Cultural Precinct in a video characterised by a rarefied atmosphere and stressing the indissoluble tie that this cultural centre has with the surrounding city.

As perfectly explained in the word of Kunlé Adeymi, the TOGETHER. THE NEW COMMUNITIES IN AFRICA exhibition will bring to the Furorisalone “one of the fundamental themes of this century: urbanisation. The result is the growing number of ‘megacities’ that are developing on the planet and facing a common challenge. In this context, in the same way that Silicon Valley represents the ‘home’ of new technology, the metropolitan cities in developing countries will provide the rest of the world with new solutions for sustainability and social responsibility… the people who live in these cities have helped us to define a new level of understanding, thanks to their innovative way of living and using spaces, materials and infrastructures. The environment – streets, bridges, sidewalks, raw materials and waste – is acquired, cultivated and re-established to exploit it at best with minimum means. Unique communities and evolved social structures have come to life where people live, work, negotiate and move around in such a rare way that we can hardly see in the so-called civilised world that, ironically enough, is now the part of the world with the slowest development. We believe that these picturesque and frantic realities cherish a solution to some of the major problems that contemporary cities are facing today”.